well territory for spreading their ideology as we've seen in the past so the problem doesn't stop there does it. these aren't simple you know one word solution problems these are complicated complex issues where different rights are at play here the real discomfort that many have felt in the wake of mrs jones comments is that regardless of if you hate the actual person he's talking about if we allow our governments to to increase the amount of. arbitrary powers they have faked extradition lee kill certain citizens of our own country even though they commit a crime we even though they've done something you know scary or whatever they happen to be the bogeyman of the day history has shown that when governments get that taste of that kind of power it's only a matter of time before it's applied on you know the they're the enemy combatant so to speak or the bogeyman of tomorrow i would ask my interlocutor what he would do

about it the government today to get these types of powers what would happen tomorrow if a government came to power which which began to criminalize your own political views and personal. beliefs and so forth so we have zero you will of no you have said to the rights now you're defending all you have rights for a reason we have rights for a reason and we have to. challenge our own governments if they you know overstep the boundary and they fail to comply with the rule of law due process and so on so for because although yes it's going apply to any way it may be applied to somebody you know quite differently tomorrow. i think that's absolute nonsense first of all you're talking about isis is some sort of false bogeyman and i'm shocked to hear that this is very clearly a vicious death cults in the united kingdom categorising as it is that is not.

attempting to come on defending i still here and i'm saying again is very real i see where you are maybe that is exactly what you are the enemy these are very real that allow argument for why than right here in the us with our. i'm with you although way in how does you know contradicted international law because what you're doing is you are willfully misconstruing what rory stewart said as to apply to you cases that have remained in the u.k. so we're talking about whether they were actually where they were they on british ships and i would have left. them travel to the arbitrary one to join dark with a vicious death cult world where. any any any sovereign government must have the right to enter into war and enter into conflict with its enemies and that is all that is happening here in the way it is it is in contravention of international law we are engaging with isis in the levant to kill. and to destroy this vicious death and i'm not there has not anti you because you have been

doing so contravention of law and if you could just give them just give you thirty seconds we are talking about british citizens who have joined up with isis and you respond thirty seconds yet again nobody is defending isis here i understand they are a legitimate target they evil whatever you want to call them but the point isn't just you know under the pretext of this this this evil target let's give our government even more powers to you know extradition traditionally restrict british citizens rights let alone kill them we have to be more intelligent and see the new ones between you know isis as an entity and british citizen an individual citizen that may or may not actually be fighting for them gentlemen left to wrap it up there i'm afraid appreciate your frank views though ben harris quiney chairman of the conservative think tank the bow group on the left and some on but muslim rights

campaigner in chief editor at twenty one c. many thanks to both of you. thank you and that wraps things up for this hour appreciate you guys at home staying with us hope you got something from the double back at the top of the us either. hello and welcome to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle we're here in southern russia attending the paul di discussion club and our topic is u.s. russia relations and the state of the world. my

guests are anatol lieven he's a professor at georgetown university in qatar as well as author of several books including america right or wrong we also have richard stockwell he's an expert at valdai discussion club as well as author and professor at the university of kent and we have james sure he is an associate fellow at chatham house as well as author of hard to see in soft coersion russia's influence abroad or in general and to start our discussion i'd like to first go to enter toll a lot of people moment the current tragic. situation with us russian relations i mean with good reason but does it matter it is so much as it used to should we lamented so much because things go on but it's certainly highly regrettable and in my view largely unnecessary but exactly we do need to keep in mind that compared to the cold war where you had soviet forces in the middle of

germany you had nuclear forces on trigger alert and you had two genuine clashes radically clashing world ideologies this is a much much smaller. dispute but in the same time that the if you look at mainstream media the threat level seems to be equal if no worse well you were a journalist i used to be a journalist to deduce papers television advertising has to be sold right in what journalists have been made to name by playing down a proverb the more conflict but in my view i mean the areas of dispute. imperial problems in the former soviet union of a kind which we've seen in formal western them as well and they are of course disputes but in my view heidi don't extend limited disputes in the middle east given the properly seen our greatest enemies in the middle east sunni islamist

terrorism are in fact the same. james speak that is us relations that important war because i mean if you if you look at all of the numbers you know russian defense spending versus the united states and nato i mean they're not even comparable i mean russia's actually cut down on defense spending people focus in on that looking for a conflict when there really isn't there peter first of all russia u.s. relations of enormous importance to russia the united states remains russia's significant other and despite that discrepancy let me present you with another discrepancy if you look. at the balances of military power in the areas where actual tensions are taking place and where differences of interest are most acute the statistics are tiley the opposite of what you have presented no a week where you you're looking at russia's border here not looking at brussels

it's also the border of europe now on the border of nato and in this sense this sense alone the situation is more dangerous than a cold war because then the line of. mark haitian was not only far from the russian border but from the soviet border it's now on well that's a very good point richard but it's nato that went into russia's border was in russia they went in there was no no that was the last to go. there do they can for russia there is a continuing discussion about need to expansion is not a big issue in those let's go to richard it matters but not in the way it mattered before before i think that it's not just the united states or us you actually relations it's the whole question of the atlantic systems. and the larger global shifts. the idea of the so-called us led liberal international order being as it were a global system yes it was but the same time there were always exceptions former

soviet bloc and china the third world a nonaligned movement and so on but today the context is still. google shifts have taken place in which that relationship of the nato system as you say which includes not just the united states not just nato european union as well the whole system as it were has a specific logic to it and that logic is opposed by china and a number of others and that logic is expansion enlargement it's enlargement not just physically but also ideologically the view that it's as it were positive values a virtue and so it is that is that the new terrain and terrain anatole of the i don't like using the word new cold war because as you said earlier it was something very different and it's not the same again but there is an ideological trend to it i mean the neo liberal order believes that it's destiny it's much you know it's messy it's like some kind of messianic message for the world and russia obviously

doesn't see it that way but nor of course do as richard said a very large number of people around the world including of course many western allies in the middle east we know. biti agrees with this aspect of the west from agenda it's not just opposed by iran but of course in a different way it's posed by saudi arabia the largest democracy in the world as they constantly remind us india is now ruled by a government which strongly wishes a close defense alliance with the united states but absolutely rejects western liberal secularism as an ideology and rejects ferociously and the rights of the us or the west to lecture india on this subject but of course i think you know what we are also saying and i think that perhaps this also does explain some because styria in the western indians is the very appropriate word well that you know in the era

of trump in the era of the latest election results you know in europe it's by no means clear that the ideological divide is in fact so clear cut and if one looks at the ideas that are driving trump if you can talk of it is we can as long as you note that i mean clearly these do not represent the the liberal consensus which is governed western policy for more than half a century now in. there is a values element in this here because you know. russia is a very very conservative country and in obviously the west isn't here and that's maybe the new clash of ideas let me first agree with richard about something because important i agree with richard about something. going to be here and this has been about since twenty fourteen in europe and i'm excluding for the moment the

issues that on a toll raised outside europe is about the jitter missy and the future of the whole sinking based cold war. i don't think it's it's just local this is as richard said it is systemic now i. i've always thought it's not a new thought that if the west principle had been a bit different from the beginning we would have been a slightly better place namely that russia internal affairs are russia's business but the internal affairs of georgia and ukraine on russia's business i think there would have been a clarity which is but absent the twenty five years because the west has allowed quite reasonably russia to connect all of these different approaches acts with a presumed aspiration to change the system of governance in russia itself and that is what is made this whole issue so you're talking but you know you know only we

can agree on so many things here but you know i can we can go back up to go back to the breakup of yugoslavia and the recognition of costs of oh and i can remember it very very clearly a foreign minister said you know this is opening up a pandora's box and it did ok james you would completely agree the helsinki. it's a aspiration about the post. world war two order about borders about. external influences and internal affairs of other countries when the cold war came to an end that started to fray and i think they did that everyone has paid the consequences here but you have good health thinking is one thing if the context in which the principles of inviolability of botha's human rights and so on is located the big thing is you say to yugoslavia it's a symptom you're creating is a symptom of the failure at the end of the cold wall to establish an inclusive and

comfortable security and indeed political and value system of all if you decide inclusive this is the problem i have here we've had since two thousand. in the under i'm in bed and i think it's spoken. is it a new record that would include russia not as a hostile power not as a adversary but a mechanism they could strive you know nothing would be perfect and wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be fast ok i'm being realistic here it's not quite the situation yes certainly the atlantic system was not designed or not intending to exclude go so that's certainly the case also it's a mitigation measures took place nato russia council and so on but i'll just say one important thing between one thousand nine hundred ninety one when go bitch i was putting forward all sorts of ideas about appearance formation of the international system that the end of the cold war would be a mutual victory for all everything like this we know that precisely at that moment

after his fantastic speech as the united nations december one thousand nine hundred eight still as common european then george h.w. bush came up with the idea of a europe whole and free now it's a fantastic idea but the idea was put forward to really gain the initiative away from the soviet union which was still a functioning enterprise at that stage and go but you haven't quite explicitly they said look guys go but you of moscow's getting the initiative and getting a lot of support around the world we now need to take the initiative so these ideas good ideas but they were embedded in the logic of enlargement of an existing atlantic system. let's say that's being spareness of russia. it was not designed to be an expensive gusher but it was to make sure that russia knew its place and that it was going to its place and thank you for stating that can i just say that in the middle east at the moment on the geo political front you have a completely different lineup on one of the most important issues and threats you

have britain france russia and china supporting the nuclear deal against the present well not necessarily administration but president of the united states who wants to wreck it this is not a clear stand off there are gentlemen let me jump in here we're going to have to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on u.s. relations today authority. i've played for many clubs over the years so i know the game inside. the ball isn't only about what happens on the pitch pull the funnel school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the superman kill the narrowness and spending to get to the twenty million. so it's an experience like nothing else not to because i

want to share what i think of what i know about the beautiful game but great so one more chance with. the base. welcome back to crossfire all things considered to mind you were discussing u.s. russia relations. ok ed i want to go back to before we went to the break you were talking about. western perceptions global perceptions of president trump's. decertification or the

move to sort of the iran nuclear deal go ahead and remember this is easier said well whenever the republican party in congress is not just a trump thing but the point is that here we have a completely different lineup i mean as it would be seen i think in western european capitals as well as in beijing and moscow all of responsible powers working together for a reasonable international agreement and to avoid yet another potentially disastrous conflict in the middle east against a roll of the wild out. the united states or at least the republican party of the you know it's global perceptions of the united states as well i mean if you look at the syrian issue of course people are all over the place we have you know iran and turkey israel and turkey still quasi allies with their own policies in america with

its policy in russia with its policy and then of course we have the europeans as usual sitting on the sidelines wringing their hands but i mean i i think on the ideological front as well. this isn't a case of communists you know the old communists opposing capitalist democracy in europe by far the biggest threat of visibly internal as a catalogue separatism you know new nationalism coming up the impact of the migration crisis on the european public. but all of these are really this this is what threatens the rebel you just want to clarify here with us it's not russia's fault that can only one set of having different ok nor is it just want to make sure i'm ok normally no one breaks it russia is full you know the greatest plays to the european union the potentially mortal threats to the european union in time i'm not from russia you know this fascination this hysteria and it was absolutely right i

mean i'm in the media business i mean you want clicks you want eyeballs you know these sensational headlines. i can understand that but policy that's not a policy for a country to have here and and it's all mentioned you know we have you know ship ships going on for example in india all the problems in europe we see some kind of game happening in syria and then we have iran is back on the table here. you have you have any ministration that is being forced to demonize russia for reasons we don't really need to go into here but then russia is an important player in the iran story that's kind of. a missed opportunity for the united states or europe russia to deal with iran dare i say something i think we will agree upon whatever disappointment. whatever the legitimacy

indeed necessity of connecting values and interest in europe once you try as a matter of policy to transpose peace values out. into the wider world stage you would inevitably produce have a can chaos and this is what we have see now to put trump into context well before the whole syria business blew up about not twenty eleven throughout all these years there was never a western policy about syria that was just another. that there was a moralistic narrative about meanwhile russia in the external world when it has made mistakes but where its competence cannot be fault it has. had a very clear. consequentialist utilitarian limited

even. limited often by its own means no what happened in twenty fifteen was perhaps even a belated response to two factors first the above the ministration for all sorts of reasons created great uncertainty among states traditionally in the middle east they allowed a power vacuum to emerge for all sorts of reasons which gave russia an opportunity and secondly assad at the point was in trouble. this is an important ally of russia so in that situation you had both reason and opportunity to do what was dog and it was exceptionally well done and the only thing surprising is that anybody else was supreme was exceptionally well done richard it was but there is no kudos for that is a matter of fact i see just the opposite the the the media narrative on syria is beyond orwellian in the west in my opinion ok. james has mapped it out

perfectly that was a perfect opportunity maybe on a mega scale russian the united states would disagree on many things but on one very specific thing they could have agreed very clearly in trump ran on that as a matter of fact to a point to a point on the one side as far as serious concern going to russia was indeed quite consistent whereas us policy was simply in comprehensible that was what you had to say so if you are going to say i do in the defense department on going it is the traditional sense absolutely but that was only a reflection i think that since twenty fourteen in particular data with a ukrainian crisis is that the old model which i suggested of these two narratives since the end of the cold war the twenty five years the cold peace it's now for argument it into all sorts of different to shooting off in different ways in the middle east as one set of things in europe another and so on and what we witnessing is even began and. is a certain u.s. to be a treat it's not moving away from dominance primacy in the world it's actually interpreted

the way it's actually leading the world. is changing its forms and it's confusing its allies like saudi arabia and. that's a very it's a fascinating point. how can the u.s. as a hedge on lead differently or maybe it's too early to say. well i mean in the middle east you see that things have been become so complicated largely but by no means entirely because of america's own actions but look at the issue of kurdistan you know of an independent kurdistan nobody really knows what to do with the sides are so complicated you know we have allies in syria who are enemies over kurdistan but then again i mean as jim said we don't even really know who we are in this case because so i think that but on the other hand you also see which is perhaps one of the most dangerous things amidst precisely this.

retreat because one should also remember that this is extremely closely militarily involved the u.s. strategy in the middle east is relatively new in this case after the cold war to some degree it came even after after nine eleven so one could see you know in general the retreat to a previous model but of course interspersed as we're now sees with iran we can. back it is the military correct tool it seems to me is too much of a blunt object it's that's a substitute for a much more a more policy you know what they what each major power wants to do with cheap i would say james put it really well russia's syria policy was theory well defined what goals what assets they would put into it and if they didn't achieve goals at a certain amount of time using those assets it would make a radical reduce in not just double dow double down double down like the u.s.

and its allies did in syria where the situation for example in syria is the endgame in which is probably even is is neither is rewarding or do you always this idea of east of the euphrates fields and so on so there could actually be a direct military conflict we know that a couple of weeks ago two. days ago this left and colonel russian was killed and so on it well we don't other circumstances but highly suspicious but in other words everybody's going to and this sort of type of dominant or victor at the end of what everybody's going to be ending up as a loser could lead to and also the fact that has given the military in syria the ability to act almost autonomously is exceptionally dangerous but the big picture again sir just to simply to say is that we're seeing almost a type of undertow of the defection of the united states from its own system that it established and so a lot of people who just support building that on the ground here i mean it's a long process so it isn't just. a long term tendencies that the view within the

states is this burden really worth it is it in our interest is an important question such as gazing important questions the way he's doing it is a different issue but has to wonder you know when so you mr trump is confronted with the kurdish issue he'll probably say you know the kurds now ok where are they really. trying to which i'm not trying to diminish donald trump lose a limb by saying that is that the president owes you a long series and it's you found yourself in a situation where it is so intractable it's so complicated and you don't know what victory is that's dangerous or james you were. let me move on my metaphors ok the elephant in the room obviously is the trump ministration so to open the pandora's box metaphor because i think now stop you have to talk about it you know i think. we have to do what i think has been intelligently done in moscow it's time to draw

a distinction between trump and his views and his inclinations and the trumpet ministration particularly the national security coming clearly or this is a highly respected people they are they have they have a clear and very tough view of what u.s. interests saw a. they're not fundamentally ideological by the way they are very means ends calibrated. what is interesting is you know i think by the way they obviously have less of a restraining influence over trump when it comes unfortunately to wider global problems like iran and north korea than they do with regard to russia where for domestic reasons trump knows i'd better not touch any of this ok but what i have seen i interpret what has recently happened in syria with the u.s. military strikes in a different way because what i think these people have at least decided is we're

not yet in a position to know what the final interest and end game is but what we do know and we will have made it clear we will not see chemical weapons being used and we will not see syrian forces attacking those who are attacking isis and on each occasion when these red lines have been crossed they are backed and unlike the previous their predecessors they have not consulted with allies they have not shown anyone they have just done it without warning now i think that has really registered in russia and i don't think the consequences i was bad as all that. i know i'm throwing of no doubt it would be very were very no more questions than we did have here gentlemen or this part of the program we've run out of time on to thank my guests here in sochi and i want to thank our guests and viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember. but

will does again in a moment and you sanctions are breaking but to fall to the damaging both sides it gets to its new reality. meets. the russian economy and the russian the financial system and i know a lot of people who are looking for a creative ways to get better results. here's what people have been saying about rejected in the senate just pull on a. real show i go out of my way to lunch you know what it is that really packs a punch oh yeah there's the john oliver of party americans do the same. apparently

better than. you see people you've never heard of low or down to the next president of the world bank so very. seriously send us an e-mail. coming up on r t america the white house announces it will release thousands of pages of classified documents relating to president kennedy's assassination despite worries from the intelligence community. then the u.s.s. ronald reagan docked in south korea following a weekend of military drills coming up in a live report why this word is visit is being seen as more military aggression by the united states and here in the nation's capital a new study reveals a body camrose worn by d.c. police had little to no effect on their behavior the surprising results straight ahead.